36 – Chatting and Contraband

Dylan turned to see a man dressed in monk robes running up to him. By the monk's side stood a woman in similar garb, a large pointy hat with gold trim sat on her head. It was turned ever so slightly to give a lopsided appearance. Behind the two stood muscular teenagers; one in gold spandex, the other in orange.

The four approached Dylan and Surfsup. "You're the one people talked about a few weeks back right? The suited villain?"

Dylan took a second to answer the four. He was torn between answering honestly or roleplaying his secret identity. In the end, it sounded more fun to roleplay. "I am not that marvelous villain Dr. Zlo. No, my name is Eric Vil, a scientist of renown. I am here shopping for normal everyday goods with my friend. But if I was that amazing villain... What do you want?"

The monk turned to the teenager in orange. "Hey Titan look, he's like you."

Titan glared. "Ain't nobody like me but me. And he looks nothing like me. He's obviously a mild-mannered man with a companion who rides a hoverboard."

Dylan opened his mouth to respond but the mage spoke before he could. "Do you take fight requests?"

The question broke Dylan out of his fledgling secret identity. "Sorry?"

"It's like this," The barrier hero started, "a bit ago we ended up facing your minions when they robbed this plaza. Well, I think they're your minions. They looked like the ones you used when you kidnapped the Mayor's Son. We ended up putting the clip of the fight online. The vid ended up getting a ton of views on our channel. So we started going around asking other villains for PVP fights. But none of them have the flair that yours seem to have, comments keep asking for more stuff with you. So we were wondering if you wanted to do some PVP. If you want, we could trade you some in-game cash or tell you where some good secret contacts are."

Surfsup hopped off his rocket board. "Dude, this sounds sweet! We could totally do a 4v4! Our squad vs. yours!"

The mage looked at the two. "So does that mean you'll do it?"

Dylan opened his friends tab, "let me message the others."

Superfan39526:

Hey do you guys want to do a pvp against this team we met just now?

DemarX:

Sure I don't mind

When?

Dream and I are still fixing your base up

Candequeen:

I'm down for it

But I agree we should finish the base

Dylan looked up. "When would you want to do this? Because we still need to fix up our base for the alien invasion."

The monk answered. "We don't mind scheduling it for later. We want you guys to be ready for it anyways. Should make for a cooler fight."

"Oh dude we should totally have it so we try to rob a place and you come and stop us! Like all those old movies!"

The mage looked at Surfsup. "What, like you guys pick a target and we sit around until you come?"

"Yeah dude!"

"That sounds pretty cool," said the golden teen.

"Can we pick where you attack?" Asked the monk.

"We can go over the details later Ram," said the mage. "Add him to your friends list and we'll talk later. I'm sure they don't want to sit around in a parking lot chatting."

The hero Ram responded, "you're right. Add Yuralionfive when you get the chance. Though call me Rampart, or Ram." Rampart pointed to his friends. "That's Oro, Titan, and Merla."

"Cool, I'll add you right now. "

"Awesome, thanks a lot guys!"

Dylan added Yuralionfive, to his friends list. They said goodbye to the heroes and made their way towards Dylan's new contact. Surfsup pulled Dylan back onto his board and they cruised down to the harbor district where the secret contact was rumored to be. Along the way, Surfsup started talking.

"Dude, we should totally start a channel like those guys. Make vids of our fights and stuff."

"I don't know how to edit though."

"Dream can do it! She's great at it. I sent her some footage of me surfing and she put it all together into this sick montage."

"John was saying I should record my antics as well. I wasn't going to do anything with it other than send him clips."

"Well then we gotta make a channel! All of us can record our crimes and Dream can make them into montages. Can you imagine how many views we'll get with a video of us stealing the mothership?"

"I dunno, I play this game to relax."

"You can still relax. Just send your recordings to Dream. I'll manage the channel."

"Yeah, okay. As long as I don't have to do anything else that's fine."

"Dude sweet! Internet fame here I come!"

Dylan rolled his eyes. Surfsup did a barrel roll. Unprepared, Dylan slipped off the board and fell to the ground. He panicked for a second before he remembered he had his rocket shoes. With a quick tap, he activated them and flew back up to Surfsup.

"Dude!"

Surfsup looked away, embarrassed. "My bad dude."

Dylan decided to fly himself the rest of the way. The two villains landed in front of a run-down shop near a small dock at the edge of a dirty beach. A man who looked exactly like the manager from the plaza sat outside the shop in a rocking chair. A floppy fishing hat rested on his head, contrasting with the man's tough image.

He spotted the two as they walked over. "You want something?" His voice growled like an angry bulldog.

Dylan leaned in conspiratorially, looking every which way as he did. "I heard you're the one who can acquire some… unique goods."

The man squinted, "What's it to ya?"

"I'm currently in the market for some shape-memory alloy. And a conveyor belt."

The man leaned in and copied Dylan, looking down the street both ways. "Step into my office."

The man laboriously stood from his chair and pulled open the front door to the shop. Dylan and Surfsup steeped into the dilapidated building, the latter marveling at the disordered fishing materials on the scant shelves. The NPC followed after, closing the door and peeking out the blinds. Deciding the coast was clear, the man walked over behind a ratty desk and plopped down in an old chair. "So you're lookin' for some shape-memory alloy and a conveyor belt eh? I can get what you need, for a fee of course."

A shop screen appeared in front of Dylan and prompted him to enter what he wanted. He entered the two items he needed and paid the price. It was expensive and ate up a lot of Dylan's funds (and some of John's) but by the end of it, a box of shape-memory alloy and one conveyor belt sat inside his inventory. He closed the shop screen.

"Pleasure doing business with you," the man said. He stood to escort Dylan and Surfsup out of the office.

"Wait hold up."

The man sat back down and faced Surfsup. "You want something?"

"Yeah dude. Do you have, like, grenades or something?"

"I can get you that, for a fee of course."

Dylan looked around the room some more as Surfsup purchased whatever he was looking for. Besides the messy fishing equipment, the small shop held all the fixings of a small bait-and-tackle shop. Dylan remembered shops like these when he visited his grandparents. He looked in the corner and sure enough, there was an entire cage of crickets sitting next to a small tank of minnows.

Surfsup finished up his shopping and signaled to Dylan that they could leave. The shopkeeper escorted them out the door and slammed it shut behind them. Surfsup turned to Dylan. "Soo, now that you have what you need… Wanna go see how close I can get to those aliens? I got a couple of grenades to see if I could drop one on them."

Dylan smiled. "Bet you fifty in-game cash that they shoot you down within a hundred yards."

"Oh dude, you are so on!" The two flew back to the government district. Along the way, Dylan couldn't help but think he was forgetting something. They passed over a billboard showing a rat advertising a bucket of fried chicken.

"Surf!" Dylan shouted. "I forgot to talk to the mice!"

"Mice?" Understanding passed Surfsup's brow. "Oh, dude!"

The two turned to rush back toward the mansion.

While Dylan and Surfsup went to get materials, John and Sweet Dream opened up the base building tab to look at their options.

"Looks like we've got the normal traps like pitfalls and auto-turrets," Sweet Dream said as she scrolled through the list.

"There's the normal CC traps as well, plus a few interesting types." John stopped scrolling to look at a flying drone that dropped Molotovs.

"The minions look interesting too. There's one here that looks like a guy on steroids."

"Does he have stats?" John asked as he looked for the minion tab.

"Yeah. It looks like each has a health bar, stamina or mana, and some type of special ability. Oh and a cost. Ugh."

"What?"

"Most of these require that Alienite stuff. And there's no way to tell which ones need it until you select their box."

John made a face. "Can't developers make a good UI just once? That's all I ask."

Sweet Dream frowned too. "It looks like we won't be able to make the more specialized defenses until we collect some Alienite. We do have enough metal to make some simple gun turrets though."

John scrolled down the minion tab as Sweet Dream talked. "Okay, since we already have cannon fodder minions I think we should specialize. We should only place the generic defenses at choke points. Once Dylan's minions take out a few waves we can get some turrets or gunner minions in the windows. Probably snipers so they can shoot the aliens when the cannon fodder gets in close. We should look to strengthen the walls too. I expect there will be explosives at some point."

"Sounds like a good start. We should also add some sort of anti-air on the roof. And maybe see if we can get some sort of radar and underground scanner."

"Good idea. Do you see if we need power sources for this?"

"Yeah its in the left corner there."

"Huh. Don't know how I missed that."

"And it looks like we can only place a maximum of ten turrets and minions."

"Each or combined?"

"Each."

John looked at the requirements for turrets. From the look of it, all turrets required a power source of some kind. The first power source was free, a small generator with ten outlets. He selected the generator and a holographic image of the machine appeared in front of him. John also noticed an upgrade slot that required alienite.

"This isn't too bad, we can put all of the turrets inside the mansion."

"Sure, but we have a lot of area to cover. Did you see how big your friend's base is?"

"No, how much land do we have?"

"Click over on the base building tab and look at the map."

The indicator for John's friendslist flashed. "Hold up I think Dylan's messaging us."

Apparently, Dylan and Surfsup had found another group of players who were asking for a round of pvp. "What do you think?" John asked Sweet Dream.